Salman Rushdie first spoke out after being hospitalized last year following a knife attack during a lecture at the Chautauqua Institute in Western New York.
In an interview with New Yorkers published on Monday, Rushdie updated his health, saying, “Well, you know, I’m better. But, considering what happened, I’m not that bad.”
After a knife-wielding suspect rushed onto the stage and stabbed the author several times at a talk show, Rushdie’s representative shared that the author was blind in one eye, and his left hand was severely injured. The author also suffered multiple serious injuries to the neck and 15 other wounds to the chest and torso during the attack.
“As you can see, basically, the big wounds have been healed. I have sensation in my thumb, index finger, and bottom half of the palm,” says Rushdie New Yorkers. “I’m doing a lot of manual therapy and people say I’m doing great.”
When asked if he can type, Rushdie said, “Not so well, because the tips of these fingers have no feeling” and that he now writes “slower”.
In the months following the August attack, Rushdie admitted he had trouble sleeping due to nightmares. “There have been nightmares – not really incidents, just horrors,” he details. “Those things seem to be on the decline. I’m fine. I can get up and walk. When I say I’m fine, I mean, there are parts of my body that need to be constantly checked. It was a giant attack.”
He also admits that it was generally “very difficult to write” and that when he sat down to do it, “nothing happened” creatively. He explains, “I write, but it’s a combination of emptiness and trash, stuff that I write and I delete the next day. I haven’t come out of that forest yet, really.” But recently, he says he’s “just starting to feel the return of juice.”
Since the attack, Rushdie said he has continued to see his therapist, who he says “has a lot of work to do”, but he always “dos his best not to play the victim”. “. “Then you just sit there saying, Someone stabbed me with a knife! Poor me… Which I sometimes think,” he said. “It painful. But what I don’t think is this: That’s what I want the people reading the book to think. I want them to be captivated by the story, drawn away.” (The author’s new novel victory city released on February 7 and completed a month before he was attacked.)
Before last August’s attack, Rushdie had been in hiding for years after Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a 1989 decree, a fatwa, calling for his death after his novel. The verses of Satan was published, with the novel deemed blasphemous.
Reflecting on the threats and criticism he’s received over the years, Rushdie noted how the response seems to have changed now. “Now I have most of die, everyone loves me… That was my mistake, back then. Not only do I live, but I try to live well. Bad mistake. Get fifteen stabs, much better, he told New Yorkers.
Last August, Rushdie was on stage at the Chautauqua Institute in Western New York when the alleged attacker, Hadi Matar, rushed onto the stage and began stabbing the author with a knife – he pleaded not guilty to assault and intentional murder. After the attack, Rushdie was briefly put on a ventilator to recover while being treated at a hospital in Pennsylvania.
Rushdie described the alleged attacker as an “idiot” but said he didn’t know what to think of him because “I don’t know him.” “All I saw was his silly New York interview parcel. Something only an idiot would do,” he said. “I know that the trial still has a long way to go. It may not happen until the end of next year. I guess I’ll find out more about him later.
After receiving well wishes and tributes from countless authors and public figures in the wake of the attack, Rushdie said: “It’s great that everyone is so moved by this” and that he “hasn’t yet done so” never thought about how people would react if I was assassinated, or nearly assassinated.” He added, “I’m so lucky. What I really mean is that my main overwhelming feeling is gratitude.”
When asked if he regrets letting his guard down after moving to New York, Rushdie said that while it’s still a question he asks himself, he doesn’t “know the answer to this question.” It”. “I have had more than twenty years of my life,” he explains. So that was a mistake? In addition, I have written a lot of books. The verses of Satan is my fifth published book—my fourth published novel—and this is my 21st. So three quarters of my life as a writer have happened since fatwa. In a way, you can’t regret your life.
As for whether he was upset with security at the event, the author reiterated: “I have tried very hard over the years to avoid accusations and bitterness. I just think it’s not a good look. One of the ways that I have tackled this whole problem is to look forward, not backward. What happens tomorrow is more important than what happened yesterday.”
